Mary, p. 34: re-creating the past

October 18, 2009

Like many of N’s protagonists, Ganin attempts to recreate the past and Mary, his lost love, as she exists in memory: “He was a god, re-creating a world that had perished.” But, like the others, he only becomes lost “in the bright labyrinth of memory,” the fractured mirror of narcissistic self-reflection.” Thus, as he gloomly thinks on p. 34, there is no “eternal return,” no “second time.” Nietzsche lurks in the background here, as does Schopenhauer with the notion of “metempsychosis.”